Rat Terrier Puppy Diet

[Guest Anonymous]

Just yesterday, my girlfriend and I bought a puppy we'd bonded with, unable to leave him behind. Now, he's three months old and we're not intending to train him to be a show dog at all. He's a beloved member of the family. And we want him to eat well and be healthy.

So far, we've been feeding him dried puppy biscuits mixed with lamb and rice canned meat. My mother-in-law has been hassling us that its bad for the dog to eat this. She raised her dog on dried biscuits, which i look upon as cruel. Needless to say, this dog of hers begs whenever anyone else in the household eats meat. We want to raise our Rat Terrier, Leonardo, to be healthy and happy.

Does anybody have a healthy, simple diet they could recommend to us? Is mixing dried biscuits with the meat a good approach? We do that several times a day in small portions. Tends to go right through him, and we also wonder if this is natural. Thank you.


- Danny

[TDG]

as long as you are feeding a quality brand, it doesn't matter if you feed only dry, or dry and canned mixed, or only canned. it's a very personal decision everyone has to make for their own dog.

in my personal opinion, the worst thing to do is to feed any kind of food (dry or canned) that is sold at grocery stores or department stores. those foods are never of good quality and should be avoided.

roughly 75% of what's available in pet stores is also garbage, and mostly totally overpriced compared to premium products. if you are interested in reading about this topic, have a look here, it covers the entire topic quite well.

viable alternatives are

- feeding some "real" foods with the dry food. cooked or raw meat and veggies can be added to commercial dry foods to about 1/5 of the entire meal without upsetting the calcium/phosphorus ratio of the diet. the bonus is that you add fresh things that haven't already been processed to "near death".

- feeding a home cooked diet. a little more work than pouring kibble from a bag or opening a can, but a much healthier alternative. do NOT jump into this without doing any research, it's not all that complicated to feed a dog but you do need to follow a few basic rules. here's a book suggestion for you. easy to read, complete with recipes etc.

- feed a raw diet. a little less work overall than feeding home cooked (in my opinion), but needs more planning and you have to be very careful to keep the diet varied and not fall into a habit of feeding the same things all the time. this is also not something you just want to get into without preparation. i don't have a book recommendation on the topic yet since i seem to disagree with a lot of the stuff written by so called "BARF gurus" (BARF stands for bones and raw food or biologically appropriate raw food), but you can find a lot of information on it on the internet.

there are various different approaches to this, from carefully prepared and supplemented meals to "prey model" feeding, you'll just have to see what appeals to you.

i'm a "middle of the road" feeder without any extremistic views towards either commercial or raw foods, but i hope this short list will help you a little bit in finding a better way to feed your dog. :)

[maz]

As a fellow rattie owner, I just wanted to say hi. Rats are wonderful dogs, as you are finding out already.

Don't have much to add about food, as there is overwhelming information out there. If you're looking for a good premium food, Canidae is the one we've chosen- we feed our RT as well as our other dogs both their canned and dry, and we've been very happy with it. Good luck!